Simple Soul Food On Wiedner Hauptstraße
A nearby church bell is just chiming 6 p.m. as the last outside tables fill up at Zur Herknerin, Stefanie Herkner’s Wirtshaus in Vienna’s 4th District. As usual, all of them are reserved, but Herkner, who fulfils every cliché of a Wirtin with her red cheeks and her outgoing and genial attitude, manages to find […]
Wiedner Hauptstraße Becomes Penny Lane
This weekend, the Freie Bühne Wieden belongs to The Beatles. On 12 and 13 January vocalist Reinwald Kranner and pianist Béla Fischer (with his two sons as a piano-trio) takes audiences from “Strawberry Fields” to “An Octopus’ Garden”. The guests are invited to take a trip down memory lane to a time when “Yellow Submarine” or “Lucy in […]
Brunching at the Kunstbus
When Brigitte Macho first saw the architectural plan for the front of her copy and print shop, she was puzzled. “I thought he had just photographed it while a Wiener Linien bus was driving by,” admitted the owner of M+N Copy and founder of the art initiative Kunst im Bus. We were sitting in the […]
Book Review: Tim Bonyhady’s Good Living Street
Vienna in Australia: Art and Memory Visiting his grandmother and great-aunt’s flat in Sydney as a child, Tim Bonyhady found the looming black furniture and wall-to-wall paintings “claustrophobic”. It was only decades later, when he began to write his family history, that he realised the massive pieces crammed into the small apartment had been designed […]
It’s a Kind of Magic
It was Christmas long ago, when with wide-opened eyes, I unwrapped a brand new boxed set of magic tricks: Enchanted dice, cursed rings, and a magic wand opened the previously hidden door to a world of wonder. Then, hours later, after desperately trying to master at least one of the tricks described in the manual, […]
Beauty With a Clear Conscience
Today’s organic cosmetic products are leaving the image of burlap bags and musty oils and going for a fancy look, with brands like The Organic Pharmacy and luxury cosmetics with ingredients like gold and diamonds. Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Robbie Williams treat their first-class visages to organic pampering – if you believe the spin-doctors. Will […]
The White Cube: What makes an art space
The notion of “the white cube” is now collective art knowledge. The ideology of what qualifies as a “gallery” has been consistently contested and reinvented. The redefined parameters of a gallery space spread across a wide spectrum from educational institutions to casinos to artists’ associations. These spaces inform the cultural production and add another layer […]
British Christmas Dinner
To recreate in Vienna the ritual of a propper Christmas dinner with roast turkey, crackers and flaming Christmas pudding, planning ahead is vital, but it’s also a challenge, and well worth rising to. Order your turkey from Zum Gockelhahn at the Naschmarkt (stand 180-183), a tried and trusted source (and friendly, too). They also sell […]
